“Pretty good for someone without a Blessing, right?” Bastian asked, standing over the steaming figure.

The man laid there, simply looking up with exhaustion in his eyes as vapor left the pores of his heated body, “I see that’s another form of strength—your knowledge and wit. I lost. Do what you must.”

The mercenary shut his eyes, welcoming whatever fate the victory of the battle had in mind. Expecting the end of a blade to be rammed into his chest, the stoic swordsman found himself surprised as he opened his eyes, only finding the adventurer claiming something else besides his life as a prize.

Bastian retrieved the dark-blue sack, bouncing it in the palm of his hand, “There we go. I think I earned this.”

“The crystal…? What’re you planning on doing with it?” Claxous asked with exhaustion weakening his words.

The adventurer shrugged his shoulders casually, having a lackadaisical look upon his face, “I’ll see if your boss still wants it. He may have betrayed me, but I’ll make him throw a few more jewels in for good measure—maybe give him a few punches to the face as well. For good measure.”

A small laugh left the swordsman’s lips for the first time as he closed his eyes, “I’d advise against that. The moment you step into Frederick’s estate, you’ll be cut down by a dozen guards. You’re a dead man walking. If I were you, I’d hightail it out of Velmusia and cut your losses.”

Bastian softly tapped his hand against the laid-out man’s shoulder before standing back up, beginning to walk away, “Maybe the me of yesterday would, but…I’m here to stay.”

Leaving the boundaries of the smoky field, he realized he hadn’t quite memorized the layout of the eleventh floor. He was at the threshold of the black soil, looking upon a small hill that led back into the depths of the black steel halls.

Echoes of footsteps rang, both distant and close, though unseen, putting him on alert as he kept his eyes peeled.

‘I’m not home free yet. This is the eleventh floor we’re talking about–and I’m not in the best shape right now,’ he thought.

He coughed up into his hand, finding freshly red blood spread on his palm. It was his entire body that ached and burned, exhausted beyond any state he felt he’d ever pushed himself to. Now that he looked at himself, he wasn’t exactly in a pretty state, with his cloak being burnt and torn, and his shirt missing a chunk out of it with his bruised chest on full display.

‘I guess Frederick can wait–I need to get home and rest…then I can–’ he thought.

The formulation of his thoughts came to an abrupt stop as the ground sank beneath his right foot, causing him to lose his balance as he was left utterly taken by surprise. As he looked down, the blackened soil was overtaken by cracks that stretched outward, splitting it apart and breaking beneath him.

“Huh–?!”

It happened so quickly, with not enough time for him to take a single step as a feeling of weightlessness overtook his body. The soil had crumbled completely, causing him to slip through the ground as he began descending.

What he fell into wasn’t a bed of dirt, but a vast interior of stygian steel that blended into an architecture of roots and lightly-glowing, deep-red leaves that clung to the walls like overgrowth. It was a hollow section, devoid of anything that he could see besides the colossal perimeter of the tower’s width.

‘This is–huh? How?’ He thought, finding it difficult to formulate thoughts mid-descent.

It was an area of the Tower he had never seen, nor had most adventurers: the “between floors.”

The empty space between floors, with in the center being a closed-off stairwell that connected the two. As he plummeted, feeling his hood flap and his brown hair wave, he looked over towards the isolated stairs, finding no way in from his descending position.

Perhaps hundreds of meters he had already fallen, looking around him for the closest wall, beginning to flap his limbs as he tried to near himself to one the of the mighty walls nearest to him.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

‘C’mon–!’ He urged.

It was hard to breathe, or harder than it already was with his battered body, as his fast descent made the air feel sharp. He waved his arms around, looking down as he saw the ceiling of the floor below rapidly approaching now; a forest of trees, with the glowing leaves acting as its roof.

From his belt, his slime-forged tool was retrieved, lacing it around his hand quickly as he looked to the wall closest to him as it rapidly passed with his descent.

At the speed he was falling, he knew simply flinging the rope of sticky slime wouldn’t be enough.

With his exhausted, hesitant body, he forced himself to act as he yelled out amidst his fall, “Levin!”

The silver charge infused itself through his hand and into the slime as he flung one end forward. It shot away with intense speed before splatting against the spot in the wall beside him, though that spot being much higher than him once it actually gripped onto the overgrowth-infested stone.

‘--Got it!’ He thought.

Gripping onto his end of the gooey rope with all of his strength, his downward momentum began to slow as the slime stretched itself, finally breaking his fall completely. He gently swung over to the wall he was anchored to, keeping his slime-held hand above him as he leaned against the stone, peering down at the ceiling of trees that was no more than ten meters below him.

“...Phew…” He breathed out, wiping his nose as a bit of blood leaked from his nostrils.

It felt as though some unseen force was toying with him the continuous bad encounters he suffered in this single excursion.

‘Below is the tenth floor…How the hell did this happen? I managed to fall this way…If the stairwell is connected to the chamber below, then that only means one thing…It’s the where the tenth guardian is,’ he surmised.

In his current state, it felt like a joke to even consider encountering a floor guardian at this point, especially the one overseeing the tenth floor. He knew rumors of the tenth floor guardian well, even enough to remember the name of the guardian well enough:

‘Bakasura’...That’s not something I want to fight, at least not right now. I might be able to sneak past though, the entrance to the stairwell should be in the guardian chamber,’ he thought.

Hanging against the bleak wall as he looked down at the field of scarlet leaves below, his boot brushed against one of the roots that clung to the stone, brushing blood that leaked from his nose with his glove.

“Guess there’s no road left but the one ahead, huh?” He mumbled to himself as he tugged on the slime anchor, plucking it from the tower’s wall as he dropped down onto one of the giant branches.

It was difficult to see into the chamber below, as the luminescent leaves were plentiful and obscuring.

‘I could try leaving the guardian chamber and navigating the tenth, but that runs the risk of having to actually find the floor’s Descent. It’s risky, but if I can get to the stairwell that leads up, it’ll put me near the eleventh’s Descent,’ he planned.

Every floor had a “Descent” of its own, acting as a flipside to the Grand Ascent: a stairway on each floor leading directly down to the first. Of course, it’s only when a floor guardian is defeated that that floor’s Descent is available to use.

He listened if he could hear anything, though only silence filled his ears. Trying to remain quiet, a throbbing in his throat forced him to cough as he slapped his hand against his mouth to squelch the sound. Enough coughing made his throat raw, forcing a pained exhale from him as he pulled his bloodsoaked glove away from his mouth.

‘Not looking too hot,’ he thought.

Either way, there was no avoiding where he needed to go as he slowly pulled his hood over his head, tugging the cowl down as it clad itself around his face. Immediately, the swelling sickness of the enchanted relic set in with a swirling nausea from his head to stomach.

It made him feel like spitting up bile, though he buried those feelings the best he could as he quietly climbed down the branches with the element of invisibility on his side. There was an abundant stretch of branches, like a maze, full of jagged, curved limbs of wood with glowing leaves brushing against him.

‘Easy does it…’ He thought, having to almost crawl downward through the thick of the foliage.

Finding his way through, the floor that met his eyes beneath was a field of silver grass, littered with overgrown, giant roots of ashen, gray bark that stuck out from the ground and overlapped. Holding onto a pair of branches, he let his body hang down, permitting his boots to gently land on the chalky soil below.

A lifeless chamber; a bleached forest with only the scarlet leaves bearing any life in the isolated environment.

It was his first time seeing it for himself, the infamous tenth floor of the Tower: “The Godless Forest.”

‘Okay…I made it in, where is–’ he thought.

Immediately as he looked up, his vision was consumed by the bone-chilling sight of it: a monstrous, humanoid figure with sapphire skin and four arms, sitting upon a throne built of roots that extended from the wall. Tusks extended from the corners of its mouth, curving upward and being decorated with golden jewelry; the clothes it wore were torn rags of gold and black.

‘The guardian of the tenth floor…Bakasura, the “Man-Eating Demon”,’ he recalled.